U.S. Pat. No. 4,419,100, U.S. Pat. No. 4,610,676, U.S. Pat. No. 4,610,677, U.S. Pat. No. 5,730,735 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,312,382 teach an ostomy coupling designed to reduce discomfort that some ostomates experience as a result of an attachment force applied through the body fitment to the skin, when two coupling parts are pressed together. The problem of discomfort is especially important during post-operative care, when the stoma surgery is recent and the abdominal skin is very tender. These documents teach a flexible collar suspension permanently secured between the adhesive wafer and the coupling part of the body fitment. The flexible collar allows the coupling part to be displaced away from or “float” with respect to the adhesive wafer, at least by a sufficient amount for a user to insert one or more fingers behind the coupling part, in order to manually support the coupling part against the attachment force when the appliance is pressed against the body fitment. Such a coupling part is generally referred to in the art as being a floating coupling part.
While this technique is successful in reducing transmission of the attachment force to the sensitive abdominal skin during post-operative care, there are several disadvantages that make this type of coupling less than ideal for everyday use. These include: (1) the profile of the system is higher than similar systems without a flexible collar, due to the increased thickness; and (2) there is a tendency for the appliance to sag away from the adhesive wafer, since the flexible collar is explicitly provided to allow the pouch to float away from the surface of the wafer. It is possible to increase the stiffness of the flexible collar, in order to reduce such sagging and maintain a low profile, but the stiffer the collar, the greater is the force that the ostomate has to apply to displace the coupling part away from the adhesive wafer, and to maintain the coupling part in the displaced position. This can be inconvenient for the ostomate, especially elderly or less dexterous ostomates. More importantly, at least some of the increased force applied to the coupling part when pulling and maintaining it away from the wafer, will inevitably be transmitted to the underlying tender skin, risking increasing the amount of discomfort instead of reducing discomfort. These problems of the prior art designs cannot easily be resolved to increase ostomate approval of the floating coupling part idea, because the problems are a result of two intractably conflicting desiderata of the floating coupling part.
The present invention has been devised bearing the above in mind.